So Go I

Northern cardinals perform a vigorous concert in dogwood arms off the corner of the house. Their culled notes stay all day long. It doesn't take much to wish I'd died in that dream of ours. For now, spring comes all on its own. One way or another, everything returns to the ground.

Gas leaf blowers underpin birdsong as a grating din I cannot block. Is any rapprochement possible? A wild otherness exists – I see it – I hear it. It plays in concert with my status-quo life. It remains numinous and mysterious, yet compliments the more mundane tangibility of existence.

I sat with M as she traveled with mushrooms. I thought I would be a distant sail on her horizon but instead I landed with her at every port and harbor. My nearness to Home led me further from myself. Where she goes I go. Where you go, so go I.

Dickinson's flowers as ministry. Gilbert's nakedness in the pitch pines. Without foliage, the world is too loud. M offers to trade body work for plants and so the deal sweetens. I am meant to grow things but I am selfish in my desire.

Spring is here and so the she-bear wakes earlier. She lumbers as she paws the earth; she scouts the river for salmon. Hints of where you've been linger in the air and yet she need not track it. You linger in coat. You stain her nails red.

Ginger and Mushrooms

Suddenly, Hyacinth! Tufts of Easter pastels held in green cradles anchor a deeper meaning in high holy days.

Wild fermented sour dough bread with a cup of dawn tea. I prepare to trip sit for Monicat by walking a labyrinth of prayer through emerging tulips, daffodils and morning glories. I wear comfortable clothes and pack headphones, poetry books and a notepad. She asks me to bring ginger root and the request makes me realize I'd like to grow it myself this year. Ginger and mushrooms.

In the prayer, desire to let go of ego causes a little weeping. I'm happy despite the process. I'm present despite the detours.

Lately I recognize my deepest feelings of self and spiritual longing in the natural world. A desire to express language and a certain ecological sensibility fuels the attention of what is both indescribably beautiful and increasingly degraded in my personal and global environment. The contemplative tradition pulls me towards an ancient root system and its future seeding.

The fragrance is intoxicating.

It is more than an awareness of the northern cardinal in pines, the purpling hyacinth emoting a deeper spirituality, or the temptation to run into the woods for six months and live in closer union with that which never dies. It is the ability to be aware of the Healing Presence itself within the living, natural things...all the things...all the people. It is the arrival beyond physical phenomena unto that which is within.

teacups of dawn
over hesitant
tulips –
our compass
reveals entire lifetimes
in one wrong turn

The clear gold and apricot of Narcissus and sunrise on the third day. Grey is the price I will always pay.

Alone with Dogs

To ken what is inexpressible, ineffable, is to know the shape of winter passing, of retreating or swelling waters, of lessening moonlight as it crosses the lake. At first, it is like a gossipy wind in the pines – who can hear it? Who wants to know? Eventually it rests, but does not settle, as stillness at the bottom of a deep lake or the expanse beyond stars. The moment you believe you have either grasped it or have been gifted it, you no longer know a damn thing.

A poet from Detroit wrote about starving dogs eating snow and I can never come back from that. A poet from New England used to walk forests and trails with dogs but now is not able to live with dogs. A woman I know is not a poet but lives alone with dogs in the woods. A train runs along the back side of her acreage, and aside from its clockwork moaning, only the sounds of trumpeter swans and Carolina wrens keep her company. In last night's dream I was a poet who lived in the woods and rescued dogs.

Alone with dogs. Can you understand the meaning of this? Does anyone hear the meaning of this?

For breakfast, cold lentils over rice, hot tea. For something without a shape, the weather sure does make an impact. Rain stipples against sills in the darkness and in my mind, I travel unmapped roads towards a place which dreams of me. A stream, woods, and wild things. Alone with dogs.

There are rumors of a truce with this life. But I no longer know a damn thing.

Getting to Seeds

Thunderstorms grate a predawn sky and rattle windows in wasting sills. With each turning day, the compulsion towards words, public or otherwise, becomes meager. Dad sends photocopied articles on Fibromyalgia management and on a sticky note writes, “Best overview on fibromyalgia I've seen - Bibliography complete and current. Love Dad.” We care how we can, don't we?

B. comes home to show us his new guitar and my god, it's gorgeous. Out of seemingly nowhere he is teaching himself Nirvana and Pink Floyd songs. His hair is the longest I've ever seen it and he seems . . . happy? If not happy, content. L. teaches him about time signatures and theory, and when they work together, my love and heart cannot be contained.

Pewter rain drives hard, expanding to pools of moonless night. The poet speaks of “romantic equipment,” which would have meant something to me in the past but now just seeps into hardened ground. There used to be pedestal upon which Psyche and Cupid embraced, but statue and plinth have been destroyed to make room for something new. It's not a big deal. My hands and heart are busy gouging the earth and getting to seeds.

The world flickers in the snapshot of lightening. I cup lukewarm coffee before heading to work. These storms – these transitions from winter to spring – these reluctant forays into the last half of life. When the sun arrives I am held in a clamp of light. How one flowers by lessening.

Soo Lock of Life

A train's muted moan spreads across the silence as it heads west. It is yet dark but birds begin to actively twitter among darkened branches. One by one, bathroom lights begin to glow and the shadows of suburbanites getting ready for work or school dance on a translucent stage. All shades of blue are my favorite – robin's egg, sky, midnight, sea – yet it is the phosphorescent, barely blue light before dawn which decidedly speaks of all things – hope, despair, potential, fear, love, mourning and enlightenment.

It has taken me almost 50 years to grow up. From the minute I was born to the minute married, I carried the mantle of respectability, performance and achievement. Peacemaker, elegant eldest, proof of good parenting. In this curated, Soo Lock of life, it was inevitable that I would try to find an escape; test the cracks; dig for daylight. I never totally broke free, but whatever sweet taste of choice I encountered was finally enough to show me where peace really lives.

Leftover Chinese takeout and fresh coffee for breakfast.

I stand over food instead of sitting for a few reasons, one of which involves a cursed millstone around my neck involving food and judgement. The sun climbs above the fence-line and will hang in tree branches for several hours before barely clearing. There is an interstice between winter and spring, dating and marriage, youth and midlife . . . I've rarely met a person who can live in that space. Eventually, one must arrive.

I showed Kyle a picture of a cabin in a mountain wood with a brook nearby, and as if I needed to sell it to him I said, “Look! We'd never have to mow again” to which he said, “if we lived in a condo, we wouldn't have to mow either” to which I said, “you know that is never happening, right?”

Come to find out, my peace is not about me. But I'm not living in a fucking condo.

Redhead Piano Bar

I remember one night in college, inebriated, walking frigid, winter streets in downtown Chicago. On one hand, I wasn't alone; on the other hand, maybe I was. I stumbled down street level steps into the Redhead Piano Bar. It was very dark, subdued, with burgundy velour on half-moon booth seats. Cigar smoke made it hard to see but someone was playing a melody to match the soft murmuring of souls trying hard not to be seen. I didn't belong there and knew it, but stayed for a drink anyway.

The next day I went to a Blackhawks game during which I fell asleep.

Chelios was still playing in those days. I had been to a game in Chicago when I was in high school, under much different circumstances. Without telling my parents, I took the train with a few friends into the city to meet up with Billy, my red-headed, Irish-Catholic summer love. Billy and I instantly combusted when we were together — a heat I had never known. When he left Gun Lake to go back to Chicago in the fall, we promised to write letters. And we did write letters – the most beautiful letters of all time.

I didn't know until I showed up on his doorstep that Billy lived rough, in a shitty part of town. I remember his parents in the kitchen, his father looking tired and drunk, his mother doing dishes, surprised by our arrival. He said we couldn't stay there and managed to find us a place to sleep overnight. He didn't stay with me that night and I think that was the end of it all. I heard a few years later he was trying to find me but by then, I didn't want to be found.

I think there is always more to the story – so much more that it would take a hundred lifetimes to unravel it all.

Deliverance

Dawn used to be deliverance. Now nightfall runs all untethered things aground. Perhaps when spring bursts forward, night and day will come into agreement – adding hours of soil work to stars.

Lately, the power dynamic of masculinity and the idea of feeling owned requires attention. Mourning doves match the sky.

Sap rises in pine like a lethargic realization that I can give more unto this existence if I can just be who I truly am. This turgid body need not do any more explaining.

Dry out the bones – crush them – and let them lift. I know what to do now but there is very little chance it will be what you expect.

The alchemy of two hands together transcends colonialism, beloved. Wanna take a walk together and talk about it?

From Hustling Verse, An Anthology of Sex Workers' Poetry, Jasbina Justice writes:

Witch, always.
I was always the witch. This is a word in a tongue that is not mine but will do.
I am terror when you make me the other, but if you stand with me I become
possibility.
Find me in the woods, sharpening my axe, sewing my bags and waiting.
Smell the blood. Lick the earth, and listen for my laugh.

Hair hungry for hands. Black lace. Oils of cedar and patchouli. Quilted blanket on the line. The witch is the gardener, lover and mother. I'm writing a new story now.

Dear Sober Jessica

I remember being very high when you told me to write something down exactly as you dictated. You began, “Dear Sober Jessica” and in the middle of the greatest love note ever written, you told me to tell myself who I really am. I cry when I think of that now.

tears
clear as creek water
falling over sharp edges

Winter holds for one last hurrah as dawn extends a taper's light into the remnants of yesterday's storm. The fifty car pile up on I-96 has been cleared just in time for everyone to make it to church. In the coziness of early morning writing I remember I suggested brunch as a consolation for all the other plans that fell apart this weekend. Now there is a time limit and a boundary. Lately Kora expresses impatience at meal time, when asking to be let in or out of the house, or when asking for attention or a jaunt around the block. Her energy this particular morning adds to the palpable pulse of stillness meeting billowing aims of the day. The crows suggest I have missed my window and they might be right.

New cookbooks for new ailments of the body. My mother cooked every meal but aside from Betty Crocker's red, gingham cooking bible, she never owned published recipes. Instead she had a binder or notebook of sorts with handwritten recipes from neighbors and memories. Three by five inch note cards in various handwriting styles, smudged with flour or spotted with oil, would be taped to a sheet of paper or shoved into pocketed sleeves. I remember she tried to teach me to cook and sew, but something in me refused the very notion of spending my time doing either of these traditionally feminine pursuits. I never learned to sew more than an occasional stray button, but cooking has become one of the main ways my family feels loved by me – or so goes the little tune I sing to myself while planning meals for the week.

I hear Kyle coughing in the basement and realize my time in hermitage for the day is finished. The snow will melt soon and the outside work will appear with a ravenous look in her eyes. The love letters are gone but I will never forget who cared enough to write.

At War

When someone wants to fuck you, but you are in the middle of writing, it is like walking straight down the middle of two armies facing each other in war. I hear the tone of the world, a dissonant gong, moving as sound waves into all my pores saying, “be generous. Give and take. That means your body, too. Are not others' needs as important as yours?” In almost all areas of my life, this carillon of noise rings true. However, not writing.

How many times will the inquisitor start flying with no where to land? How long will the war of this magnitude go on without full peace and resolution? J and I talked about swimming 100 turtles deep as opposed to sunning in the shallows. What's cool about diving that far down is, although it can get dark, cold and almost bottomless, you cannot hear the cannons or bombs of war at the surface.

I haven't been fishing or turtle catching or water snake egg hunting for decades.

I haven't walked on a frozen lake or driven a boat in years.

I haven't slept or smoked week or made love by a campfire ever in my entire life.

However, I have hiked the dunes along the glacial lake and stood as tall as the pines looking down over it all.

I have seen the war unfolding and I have imagined how tiny it might seem to an eagle or to God Herself. She sees us not as offended bodies or impoverished poets. She sees we are not really at war. We are telling stories and making music, all to the glory of that which is not bodies fucking or writing or fishing.

Still – I am guessing the body dies at the surface and not way down where the truth lives or up high where flyers fly.

In Marrow

Tesni writes an update about the Kenyan baby house and it arrives as a reminder of how life would have been different had we stayed. I do have the power to change, exchange, rearrange the energy, but it seems like it would cause chaos, hurt or harm to those I care about the most. Does this matter? Before dawn I read, “Anyone who is unable to leave the requests of others unanswered has not entirely transcended egocentricity.” (ACIM) Maybe this idea implicates sacrifice as something entirely unknown to the Cosmos, arising solely from fear. Am I victimizing others or myself?

Rain – snow – rain. This morning there is only snow and it is erasing all hints of thaw in a total white-out. March continues to embody transition. As a woman, I have eaten the fruits of my labor but I am both overweight and still hungry, missing the moon, summer stars and all the sizzle of bare, soul-to-soul aliveness. Maybe winter has just gone on too long. The weather is as much prophesy as science.

I read this poet who wrote something about how being with a certain woman was like being a fish in a frying pan. Yet he goes on to speak of the times he'd rather burn to death than be without her. In my marrow, I get that. It is not a lighthearted thing to evoke fish or burning – opposites which could not be more related. I think that is what I want, despite all the science pointing towards the freedom of just being a fish in a still, deep lake.

Little by little, winter after winter, a marriage falls asleep. That is beautiful too, you know. I guess the thing is, I find beauty in the rest but also, in the burning skillet. I sit by the riverbank, neither fish nor tourist, watching clear, cold waters move further downstream.

The Whole Story

Sometimes one allows vulnerability to lead and it doesn't work out. So what? Ego and pride take a hit, but there is an “after.” Slow, quiet, snowfall. Chickadees are still at play.

Intentional vulnerability is an attempt to join. To love. To cast off all things that are not pure and true. It's the pursuit of telling the whole story. I've been thinking of my whole story and mostly wondering about the ones with whom I share it. When my story is judged or used as a weapon, perhaps it says more about the listener than the bard. Please stop destroying what you cannot control.

Frozen cattails and red-winged blackbirds with no place to go. Winter isn't done despite all the signs of spring. Hot coffee steams against a silver dawn. As the millionth gray day cleaves to one before, it is no surprise one falls in love with Death – reachable, reliable, real.

Here's the thing. I'm good enough. And so are you. Death and Life both know this; let us be vulnerable enough to know it too.

Sowing the Silver Thread

Tiny motes of snow-glitter float and spiral in hesitant sunlight. Juncos and chickadees seem unfazed by the on-again-off-again dance between spring and winter. I, too, am less vexed than past transitions, a change I attribute to winter sowing. In the garage I set up a planting station to ready this year's fleet of seeds. A maternal instinct accompanies the planting process which is not surprising given the type of love that goes into the mere handling of seeds. The curious attentiveness, sensitivity and forward motion of energy all pours into bedding, soil and seed. In the tending, sewn is the hope of harvest, the ability to feed others, and the joy of engaging creation at its most basic level.

Barry Lopez writes about connecting and speaking with someone whose metaphor is different than yours. In an organic way, one is forced into something deeper when a shared context or jargon isn't present in which to swim. Yet after the work of being fully present in these conversations, a silver thread connecting all of creativity and creation begins to gleam in shared light. Dance, farming, films, art, crocheting, animal husbandry, music – they have rhythms. They have flow.

I think maybe as humans we are trying to connect at the “wrong” levels, meaning, we seem to only ease into our life-giving creation mode when we align or mesh with those who also use the same life metaphors we do. Activists meet activists. Writers meet and writers. Gamers meet gamers. We segregate every chance we get because it's easier. We have forgotten how to thread the cord of what we truly share into all aspects of our lives.

I'm trying to say something here.

Find the cord.

Shaman, Fallen Angels and Sewing the Veil

A sharp juxtaposition between inner and outer calls awareness towards the space or gap between the two.

Before any movement inside the house at dawn, jays are screaming and squirrels are leaping with daredevil confidence from limb to trunk and back again. Sunlight streams through rising woodsmoke and yesterday's snow continues to disappear into the flows of groundwater.

Inside, nothing moves. The only sounds are of the heater kicking on and off. Inside me it is the opposite. I am moving and dancing to heartsongs on the precipice of something bottomless and ongoing. On the outside, I am a swan gliding through still waters – observing all but remaining nonplussed.

A woodpecker drums his mating call as my husband and dog sleep into full daylight. Outside – inside – what thin veil separates?

The wildwood of life has something to say. Though humanity typically places the forest “outside,” its deeps live within us all. Its sanctity and mystery is older than man, and it has gifted its symbolism, healing and mythos to us as we wander its paths and absorb its wisdom. For so many centuries we have pushed these gifts outside of ourselves. We made the gap. We sewed the veil.

We have cheated and divorced ourselves and one another from something very much alive in all the realms over all of time. Our forest deities and shaman have become fallen angels, relegated to an outer banishment as humanity chooses technology, entertainment, and short-sighted self fulfillment as gospel.

Look in at the Stillness and then look up at the Pole Star. Walk back into the woods and fields to find and sow the seeds of our timeless, eternal existence.

Tombs and Tulips

Overnight a foot of snow covers daffodil shoots and snowdrops. Crocus return their purple hearts back to the tombs and tulips take one last nap. It's not a surprise to have snowfall so close to spring but it is still an affront. Emily Dickinson says that March is the month of expectation, which of course is entirely true. Accordingly, a remembrance of wild blue skies enters dreams and the new durability of dawn melts winter set in the heart. I always thaw too soon.

In a kiss of breeze, snow clumps fall from branches like sorrow or too many wishes. The dreaming hour continues a little longer.

Rain barrels – spigots – seed starters.

Cool dew on bare feet.

Trellis building and compost turning.

Campfires, cannabis and a crown of fireflies.

We shovel snow instead of dirt but the seasons are in charge. It was never me. You know this and yet you played along. The Hairy woodpecker drills his beak into the old maple like a rail road spike and the nuthatch inverts his dance all the way down the timbered spine. Morning yet meets me bright and night still severs all past things from staying too long. A new day always comes and this one begins with again with a pure, white slate. I almost said “we begin again” but that isn't true – we are neither “we” nor “pure white.” Thank God the guilty find their way home too.

It Was All Fish and Turtles

Geese begin to arrow and feather towards low lying waters and lakes. The sky burgeons with the migratory trails of snowbirds returning from warmer climes. Earlier than normal, the red winged blackbird puffs and trills from the remnants of cattails and marsh grasses. Dawns now slice the horizon with mango light, finding me in the still work earlier and earlier. The romance of nature simply cannot be outdone and I am wooed accordingly.

Under the Crow Moon, I dreamt of a lover's wife saying, “Grow up. It's time to be an adult for the sake of creation.” I am interested in that which is gentle, such as babbling brooks and the conversations of trees. No more fighting – not for love – not for any perceived lack. Now the smell of morning.

Daffodil shoots add inches per day despite snowy forecasts and warnings. Every year I am excited for the first blooms and every year I freak out when yellow's tenderness, yellow's first kiss, yellow's silken hope is blanketed with snow. It's funny how I do not remember the first blooms from growing up on the lake. Spring back then was all fish and turtles. It was muddy dirt roads and great blue herons along the shore.

Either way, grace is never antiquated. At times it seems one is felled by fate, but really, it's all about the flow of rivers: the spate of spring, the oasis of summer, the kaleidoscope mirror of fall and the contraction of winter. One isn't destroyed or ravaged by destiny or chance. One wakens unto the awareness and flow of seasons. We, along with the waters of life, ebb and brim in a ceaseless creation of that which cannot be undone.

To Fly and Disperse

To suddenly smell life in the air, soil thawing, remnants of startled skunks, a shimmer and whiff of pine, is to realize you weren't really breathing all that deeply for an entire winter. Lacey spiders, not quite see through but not quite pigmented either, begin emerging from the horizon of wall meeting ceiling. Daffodil shoots become green fingers praising creation and clumps of snowdrops bloom around the creek.

These first tastes of spring ignite something automatic and ancient in my awareness. The yearning to plant or even to simply be in the dirt begins to tingle at the surface of my skin. I remember feeling this way as early as 6 or 7 years old. On the lake, ice would honeycomb and disappear every few hours. The sun seemed to remove some sort dull film from itself to reveal a sharper intensity. I sat on the lake-facing deck apart from the yet-icy breezes and lose all sense of self, as if the sun was peeling away my skinned boundaries and releasing everything that has always wanted to fly and disperse. This sun worship after hibernation is by far my favorite and most clear memory of childhood.

My household was chaotic, very loud and busy. My siblings and I were always going to practice, doing homework, or fighting for a spot in the bathroom. Soccer, softball, swimming, basketball, volleyball, tennis lessons, CCD classes at church, chores – all downtime was time stolen. All alone time still included the sounds of a loud kitchen or brothers fighting, or parents disciplining children. Existence was like running out of breath underwater and struggling to surface.

Yet if I could at least see or feel the sun on my skin, even for five minutes, I had the hope of pure silence. I had boundless freedom. I could sense my molecules buzzing towards lift off, into the air, mingling with trees like piano notes on the breeze, skimming the dazzling surface of the newly ruffled lake.

Warmth after winter. Light into spring. How still I could be in this worship! How happy.

It's still like this. I still find protected spots in February's transition and face spring-angled sun beams. Despite the tomb of winter, Mother Earth never stops humming the hymn Nothing is Dead.

This time of year it is difficult to stay in the moment. The relief of winter's end is joyous, but that is already past. The anticipation of planting gardens and flowers is exhilarating, but that is future.

But right here, right now, this beginning of March with snow still on the ground, the sunlight breaks through the gray dirge of sky and spirit to touch that which has been cold for months.

And I am free.

And happy.

Foraging

Jack Gilbert wrote: if all the stars were added together they still wouldn't know it's spring. The silence of the mountain is not our silence.

On March 4th a few inches of fresh snow dresses the ground. Yet springtime birds sing at dawn and my heart cannot stay asleep a second longer. They don't sing for me. Yet the hope and promise of the impersonal flowering of fertility and creation is a force I recognize better than my own face. There is a clemency and grace in nature but do not be fooled; there is also the power to destroy, rebuild, change, nurture and guide. It's not for humanity's sake. It's not for my sake. The consciousness of Mother Nature is older, deeper and more rich than fathomable to any single being, enlightened or otherwise. She causes one to forage harder and deeper than abilities allow. All of this in a birdsong in March.

In the sunrise I see that my landscape is dark wall of an old cave upon which are markings and clues of another time. Something prehistoric. Something un-mappable. The light falls fresh on dim eyes but I am not ungrateful for a chance to see in a different way. In this light I consider the theme of my dreams lately – a large family reunion, messy and chaotic but also, full of new life mingling with old life. I feed newborns and watch the elderly reach out towards the younger generations. Some leave before the party is over and some arrive unexpectedly. Yet in the end, a great storm arrives, scattering whomever remains. It is unclear as to whether I am safe or not. But what is clear is that it doesn't really matter at all.

Without Hope, Without Despair

For a long time, I thought these sentences were for a specific reader. They were for someone.

Over the last week I have taken them down, thrown them away, pulled them back out and put them back into this space. I did all of this because I have realized who my audience really is and frankly, I am not at all pleased at the revelation.

All these thousands of sentences, for over a decade, were over-burdened with metaphor and mangled with symbolism and code. They were always obscuring the truth because the truth was too hard to face.

And the truth is: I am dishonest and I am selfish. I am a child who needed to understand what it means to be an adult.

Leaving the sentences up in this space means facing myself. Continuing to write means growing up and moving on.

So, I am beginning again, which does not mean the sentences or the writing will be any better or more interesting. However, maybe it means that whatever it is that I put out in the world will be more true, clear, and creative.

Maybe Love will extend more fully when I am no longer distracted by shame or desire or some idea of lack. Or maybe I won't have another damn thing to say at all.

All I know is that hitting 'delete' doesn't change anything, nor does ignoring the call to write.

I remember reading Karen Blixen and going to all her old haunts when I lived in Kenya. I know my experience of living there wasn't the same as hers, but it wasn't all that different either.

I remember reading a specific line by her and deciding in that very moment that I, too, would write. She said, “Write a little every day, without hope, without despair.”

How much I have forgotten since.

How much I remember.

Born Again

Open windows in February allows a westerly whisk to clear the miasma of illness.

For a few moments the temperature difference meets on my skin like an exhilarating first date, replete with goosebumps and dreamy lift. For days I watch gradations of light and dark projecting silhouettes of stick figured dancers along my bedroom ceiling. An occasional splurge of rainbow light floats around like fairies if the sun finds the prisms hanging in the window. For hours I lie on my back and consider vulnerability as birthplace. I learn hard lessons about being born again.

Mom loves us so hard. She is a mama bear and an always-ready-to-help, strong, vibrant woman. The ways in which I am like her have not been a surprise to me until recently. The ego tends to filter out that which is necessary to magnify or exhume. Turns out, we both tend to present our own wounds or needs when someone is expressing theirs. For a moment today on the phone with her, I felt a new sense of compassion and understanding for something and someone who hurt me so many times because I finally recognized her need to connect. Selfishness in the name of connecting is still selfishness. Who loves enough to the tell the truth? Who finds a new way in an old world?

A mangy opossum lumbers atop icy snow just before dark. The dog and I see him at the same time. I wait until he is beyond her reach before I let her outside to give chase. Is that a kindness or a hindrance to my dog? Are all these hindrances we perceive somehow a cosmic kindness?

I think maybe at some point, we all set fire to what we have made; I'm just getting in some good practice.

Joy of Place

My bedroom window frames pine branches waving like gills in the last of February's vibrato. Am I still me if I can no longer smell the scent pine summoning my joy of place? Am I still me if cannot taste or freshly baked bread or the exact amount of love poured into homemade soup? Now, more than ever, the lesson that I am not my body takes hold. What use is it to mourn such things?

A man with a soiled purple blanket walks up and down the street, eventually coming to rest inside the library. He sleeps off and on at a computer desk while the world spins around him. Another man passes out in the bathroom so we grab the Narcan and call 911. A woman arrives after walking too far in the cold and she is screaming. I'm going to be sick. We take her to the bathroom, bring her some hot chocolate and sit with our backs against the wall until she feels better. These are the things that matter when it comes to the body. What I do with my body in the care of others is who I am – not thinness or good eye sight or the ability to smell and taste. Serve – extend compassion – love.

I feel the sickness ravage different parts of my body and it prevents me from being anywhere but my bed. But I am here, writing this sentence, telling you that I can still serve. I can still be love.

I've learned a lot about Love very recently and maybe someday I can write it all down.

Probably not though. Love is for living.